30-DAY SONG CHALLENGE DAY 11

30-Day Song Challenge Day 11

Day 11 of the 30-day song challenge and I’m being asked to name a song I never grow tired of.

The 30-day song challenge requires me to pick songs from the given prompts on the picture below. It’s mainly doing the rounds on Instagram but I decided to go a step further and write a post about my choices. If nothing else, it’s a great writing exercise and I am writing every day (so far!) I have taken some stick for my choices from one or two fellow bloggers so today’s song is for them 😉

Day 11

Day Eleven, a day to pick a song that I never tire of. Again, its rrrreeealy hard to narrow it down to one song as I tend to listen to the same four tracks on a loop. That was a joke and an attempt to inject some humour after yesterday’s honesty. Here’s another joke, pick just one song that you never tire of!

For today’s answer I have had to omit roughly 4,563 other songs.

I initially thought I would choose a song by The Beatles. I have to admit though, as much as I love them, there are times where I get a bit ‘Beatled’ out. I’m going though one such phase now. I blame my wife. We’ve been playing The Beatles around the house a lot recently as not only does she really like them but listening to them regularly is a great way for her to learn more English. Although, I’m not sure when she will have the opportunity to say the sentence, “We all live in a yellow submarine”.

I Live By The River

Two days ago I chose a song by Joe Strummer 30-DAY SONG CHALLENGE DAY NINE and mentioned that all 30 of my chosen songs in this challenge could be by The Clash. So having dismissed choosing The Beatles, I quickly realised it had to be The Clash.

Then came whittling it down to just one song.

There may be better tracks by The Clash, but I doubt if any constantly sound as fresh or as timeless as London Calling.

From the opeing chords to the morse code ending (spelling out S.O.S) the song just lifts me up. I can’t control my right leg. It moves in homage to Joe Strummers right leg (if you ever seen them perform you will know what I am referring to). I’m also unable to control the need to play air guitar to those raking chords. I was born to play air guitar, but enough bragging for one day.

The Ice Age Is Coming The Sun’s Zooming In

London Calling is from album of the same name and was released as a single on the 7th December 1979. It eventually reached number 11, their highest charting single until Should I Stay Or Should I Go 10 years later.

My first real memory of The Clash was in 1991 when their song ‘Should I Stay Or Should I Go’ appeared on an TV advert in the UK. It’s hardly rock and roll but as Strummer explained after London Calling was used in a different TV commercial in 2002, “If you’re in a group and you make it together, then everybody deserves something. Especially twenty-odd years after the fact.”

The album, London Calling was the breakthtough in the U.S. In 2004 Rolling Stone Magazine rated the track number 15 in its list of the 500 greatest songs of all time. It is also one of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 songs that shaped Rock and Roll. Yes, it’s that good!

The Clash’s mixture of styles influenced future generations and will continue to do so. In terms of British music they leave a legacy only matched by The Beatles.

By the way, as an ESL teacher, I applaud your use of Beatles music to improve your wife’s English. Next up, it’ll be important for her to master “I am the eggman. They are the eggmen. I am the walrus. Goo goo g’joob.” Notice how the verb changes to agree with the subject from the first sentence to the second. It’s also a wonderful illustration of irregular plurals. Finally, nobody can claim to be fluent in English without mastering goo goo g’joob.

I have very much enjoyed writing this comment. I think I’m ready for my copy editing certificate now.